Prologue –
Premonitions
Allyson
The week before my first day of high school should've been a warning of what was to come four years down the road, but I didn't realize it at the time. To me it just seemed extremely odd and kind of scary, but I really should've known better…maybe it would've made my current situation a little easier.
I was having one of my dreams again, only a month and a half after my spat with Absolem about whether or not I was going to stay in Underland sooner than I had planned. The little insect somehow managed to get me back on somewhat civil speaking terms with him, though our conversations were often terse and snappy. We were examining the Oraculum one night, trying to determine the exact date of Alice's return, when I noticed him scribbling something on a separate sheet of parchment.
"What's that?" I peeked over his pudgy arm and instantly recognized my name, along with the other six Wonderland Warriors.
"Just a list of all the Overlanders that come and go down here... Mostly the seven of you, but there are a few more…" he continued writing without even an upwards glance, "You'll be meeting one of them in a few days, by the way…you'll be able to recognize her when you see her. She stands out from the crowd, if I do say so myself."
"Poor Matt and Trevor…ANOTHER girl to add to the group of five girls and two guys." I sighed inwardly, thinking of how unfairly outnumbered they were, "Is her 'sticking out from the crowd' a good thing?" I asked, only half-joking.
"Hmm…that'll depend on her mood that particular day."
"Fantabulous…." I muttered, crawling through a crack underneath the moving calendar and between two giant mushrooms, I popped up beside him to search for her name among ours;
Allyson Maccay
Matt Sam
Trevor Amber
Lucy Tony
C'Lee Luke
Mayo
"Well, her name must be Amber…it's obviously not Tony or Luke. None of us know anyone named Tony…there's a Luke in two of my classes next year, so that's probably who that is… We're already looking at this guy named Sam, and he fits in WAY too well with our bunch." I rolled back onto my heels, examining his scrawling handwriting. The Butterfly had clearly never taken any penmanship classes when he was training to become a guardian for the Oraculum…
"I see… Have you figured out what he can do in your music band yet?"
"Nah, we're still trying to find somewhere to put him. He doesn't play any instruments, and computers freak out whenever he touches them…and he is definitely NOT driving the bus in the future." I shuddered at the thought of the die-hard Grand Theft Auto fan behind the wheel of the Warrior bus. No thanks, I'd like to live to my next birthday if you please.
"Is there anything else for him to do?" Absolem took a puff from his hookah, wisely blowing the blue smoke off to the side rather than in my direction.
"Nothing I can think of off the top of my head. You have any suggestions?"
The Butterfly pondered this for a moment, exhaling more filmy smoke. He shook his round head, "Not at the moment…You'll find something for him eventually…"
I shrugged, propping myself up with my elbows and laying on my tummy, "We really don't need any more instruments or anything…I'm sure Trevor could use some help with something that won't get one or both of them electrocuted, or shut down half of Atlanta. Or both."
Just as I mentioned his name, the letters on the parchment began to shimmer and Trevor's name started to seep back into the paper… and soon disappeared altogether.
We both creased our eyebrows in confusion; neither of us had ever seen writing vanish into thin air, even in Underland that was something that didn't usually happen. He picked up his pen and rewrote the name in the exact spot where it had been, but no matter how many times he did this, the ink would dissolve into nothing and leave the page blank. No one else's names were doing this; they all appeared to be normal. I scanned over all eleven names over and over again, hoping and praying that this was some kind of prank or something. Maybe his ink had gone bad or the paper was just being weird.
Then it got worse, "Uh…Absolem? Why are Sam, Tony, and Amber's names leaking off too?!"
His eyes grew wider than mine when he saw their names trickling down the side of the page and onto the mushroom, leaving small black puddles. There was no mistaking the horror that was slowly washing over the Butterfly's features, "Something…something is terribly wrong…"
No sooner had he uttered these words than I started to genuinely freak out; Lucy's name swirled into a little inky vortex, seeming to collapse on itself before fading away. Her twin's name stayed put, not budging an inch. Normally, the two of them doing the opposite of each other was expected, but in this case it was a chilling omen.
"What does this mean? Absolem what is going on?" Now we were both in full panic mode. My whole body was trembling and my hands started to get clammy and cold. His eyes kept darting into the surrounding smoke, as if he was watching for something to jump out and attack us.
"I don't know…I really don't know…" the Oraculum rolled up on its own and he grabbed it, safely storing the scroll away in a cranny between some mushrooms, "All that is certain is that it's not safe here. You need to warn the others about this." He began to retreat into the blue haze, his wings swirling the smoke and obscuring my vision.
The dream was starting to unravel, propelling me back into my own world, "Absolem! Absolem wait!" I reached out to grab onto him, but my hand slammed into an invisible wall. Darkness slowly crept into my sight, blacking out the image of the Mushroom Forest and replacing it with my room bathed in the rising sunlight.
I awoke with a violent start and a sharp gasp. Every sheet and blanket on my bed was piled in the floor, all tangled together. My phone nearly clattered to the floor as my hand swept over the nightstand in search of it, but I caught it just in time. I pressed the End Call button to check what time it was and discovered text messages from each of the other band members, two missed calls from Trevor, three from both Lucy and C'Lee, and seven from Mayo.
"I don't guess I need to warn them after all." I muttered, opening the first of the voicemails and hearing the match to my own terror in my friend's voice.
Allyson
Needless to say, we called an emergency meeting directly after lunch that day. Everyone was visibly shaken by what they had seen with their own eyes… Not all of us had been "in" Underland when it happened, but we all shared a gut feeling that something awful was going down without our knowing it.
Trevor and Lucy (whose names had been mysteriously erased right in front of me) dreamt the same exact thing; there were mirrors all around them, but instead of them being the normal shiny silver color, the glass was a jet black and rippling like a pool of ink, and a pair of red eyes stared from the murky depths. When they attempted to touch the unusual looking-glasses, however, the reflective material shattered into millions of tiny shards that in turn shattered all the other mirrors around them.
Maccay's dream was pretty freaky too; she said that all of us were standing with our backs to her in the former Red Queen's throne room, and when she called out to us we all turned very slowly to face her, revealing monstrously blood-red eyes and razor-sharp teeth. Just before she could flee the horrible sight, she heard the kind of tinkling music that comes from old wind-up toys and jewelry boxes, and the haunting laughter of a little girl echoing in the halls.
Worst of all were C'Lee, Matt, and Mayo's dreams, as they gave form to one of our group's collective biggest fears…they couldn't even get into Underland. Oh sure, they could see their usual hangouts, their good friends and counterparts beckoning to them desperately, as if they were in some sort of danger, but they couldn't reach them. It was as if they were at the end of a long, dark tunnel, and no matter how much they crawled, jumped, sprinted, clawed, or scrambled for the end of it, they never could make it.
Mayo's dramatic reaction wasn't much of a surprise, but the fact that the dream scared C'Lee so badly that she woke up crying scared me more than my own nightmare... She was never one to get overly emotional about anything, much less just some dream. Matt was still shaking from the trauma, which heightened my distress even more.
My nightmare only escalated the pandemonium, if it could be escalated, confirming via the Oraculum that something was indeed brewing that was out of even the Oracle's control. We assumed that if Absolem couldn't fix it, or didn't know anything about it, that it could only spell disaster…which was usually the case, since he's the only partially omniscient being we know of down there.
"So…there's nothing we can do?" Maccay asked in dismay.
I shook my head, "We don't know what's going on, and apparently no one else does either. Nobody but me was where they normally are, and I didn't get told anything despite that fact. Absolem' s not one to always be straightforward, but if he knew what kind of danger we may be facing, he'd tell me that at least." Or at least I hope he would. He doesn't seem like the type that would hide information that would determine the outcome of a life or death situation, but then again, this is the same bug that never bothered to tell me 'Oh, by the way, you're gonna actually come down the Rabbit Hole, fight the freaking JABBERWOCKY and rescue the Knave of Hearts from this looney bin-escapee of a queen!'
That's when it hit me…what if we can never get back down there? What if the Underlanders were in peril at this very moment, and we couldn't help them? My heart lurched at the thought of all of our friends fighting for their lives, and us being unable to come to their aid…they depended on us for backup in the direst of straits. What would happen if we couldn't be there for them?
Would they think we'd all abandoned them? That we'd all opted to stay in Overland forever? That we'd forgotten all about them?
"There must be some way that we can find out what's happening and why we all had those crazy dreams." Matt uncrossed his arms and twiddled his fingers, pondering a way to contact somebody in Underland.
"If the Looking-Glass portals were open we could go through them, but someone in Underland would have to open it from there. But if they can't talk to us through our dreams anymore, who's to say that those portals will work? And just to clear things up a little more, I am not falling down another Rabbit Hole!" although the adventure after my tumble was rather interesting, the plummet itself was far from pleasant. Trevor looked away when I shot him a pointed glance, remembering that it was his buttered fingers that dropped me down it in the first place.
He was just muttering something that sounded like "Sorry…" when a tapping sound came from the bathroom, like someone drumming their fingers on a TV screen. All seven of us cast puzzled stares at the door, which was slightly ajar, "Did you hear that?"
"Y-yeah…what was it?" Lucy peeked around her sister.
Seeing as how it was my own bathroom that had been invaded by the unseen intruder, it was, of course, my obligation to go in first to investigate. I cracked the door open just enough to stick my hand through the gap and flip on the light switch, dispelling all the shadowy hiding places. Based on just a cursory scan of the room, I assumed that there wasn't anyone or anything out of place in there.
However, I was also under the assumption that whatever was knocking was on our side of my huge, ornate mirror, not the other side. Just as I turned to walk back out, I saw a figure out the corner of my eye, and was extremely startled to find the Knight of Hearts looking back at me.
"Aack! Stayne!? What the-" I yelped in surprise, "How'd you get in my mirror!?"
He chuckled as the other band members swarmed around me to get a better look at who or what I'd screamed at, "Glad to see you too. Absolem partially opened the portal between Marmoreal and your house so I could talk to you; we wanted to check and see that you were ok after what happened last night."
"We're all fine, just a little worried…is everything alright down there?"
"As far as I know. We still haven't figured out what happened with the Oraculum, or anything else for that matter. Nothing else has gone pear-shaped since you got sent home, but that doesn't mean that nothing is wrong."
"I know…you don't think this is going to affect Alice coming back, do you?" I hadn't even thought about her until now. She had sworn that she'd return someday, and I know at least one person who'd be a mad, miserable wreck if she broke that promise.
He shrugged, "Hopefully not. I don't think Tarrant can go much longer without her."
Mayo piped up from behind me, "Is he alright!? He's ok isn't he?" Her insanely green eyes were as wide as a couple of dinner plates and she had a death-grip on my shoulder.
"He's fine, just lovesick is all. I swear if he doesn't stop moping around, people are going to start calling him the SAD Hatter..."
"Now Ilosovic…" I chided him, "be nice." He knew I was kidding, so he just rolled his eye and snickered.
"Yes, because you have room to talk about that." He shot back, "Anyway, I've got to go, Mirana wants me to ride to the other three kingdoms and see if they know what the deal is. It's going to take me forever to get there and back, so I have to leave in the morning…but I'll try and keep you posted as much as I can." He paused before finishing, "Just be careful 'til we get this sorted out, alright?"
I nodded, "You too. I didn't save your hide just for you to go and get it in trouble again."
He sighed and shook his head jokingly, "If you insist…But seriously, do be careful."
"Eh, don't worry about me. It's perfectly safe up here… Nothing from Underland has ever bugged me at home before, so I doubt there's anything to worry about."
"Don't be too sure. I'm not trying to worry you or anything, but if we can get up here, then so can others. And there are some Underlanders that would be willing to travel to your world just to stir up trouble. Keep an eye out for anything else suspicious…" and with that, he faded away into the glass, leaving no sign that he was ever even there.
The seven of us stood silently for a moment, exchanging worried glances between each other and our reflections. We each hoped and prayed that this would all blow over soon, but in reality, this incident would be only the first of many.
This was the beginning of something beyond our darkest nightmares…